Our Mission

The mission of the Center for Health Care Research and Policy is to:

Improve our population’s health by conducting research that examines access to health care, increases the quality of health care services, and informs health policy and practice, including policies related to the social determinants of health, and

February 8, 2018
Better Health Partnership President and CEO Rita Horwitz and JT Tanenbaum, MD-PhD candidate in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, and School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University and lead-author of the study published in this month’s Health Affairs will be guests on Ideas tonight on WVIZ at 7:30pm to discuss Better Health’s hand in the decline of hospitalizations as it relates to better care and cost savings in Northeast Ohio.

A study published in the February 2018 issue of Health Affairs reports the association of Better Health Partnership, a collaboration of primary care providers and other stakeholders, with nearly $40 million in savings over six years by delivering better care to primary care patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart failure in Cuyahoga County, avoiding an estimated almost 6,000 costly hospitalizations. Funded by a training grant from the National Institutes of Health, MD-PhD candidate JT Tanenbaum was lead author on the investigation alongside faculty of the Case Western Reserve University-MetroHealth System Center for Health Care Research and Policy, including Douglas Einstadter, Mark Votrbua, and past Center director Randall Cebul. The report estimates that 5,764 more hospitalizations in Cuyahoga County were averted as compared with other large Ohio counties from 2009 through 2014. For a limited time, you may read the full publication in the current issue of Health Affairs.Click here to read more.

Dr. Thomas E. Love has collaborated on a new study, “Heart Rate and Outcomes in Hospitalized Patients With Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction“. Among older hospitalized patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), a lower heart rate at discharge is associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality, but not with lower HF-related or all-cause readmission, according to a study published Oct. 2 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. A lower heart rate is associated with better outcomes in patients with heart failure (HF) with reduced ejection fraction (EF). Less is known about this association in patients with HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Using data from the Medicare-linked OPTIMIZE-HF study, a group led by Phillip H. Lam and Daniel J. Dooley, and including Dr. Love, examined the associations of discharge heart rate with outcomes in 8,873 hospitalized patients with HFpEF. During a six-year follow-up, all-cause mortality for matched patients was 65 percent for those with a discharge heart rate <70 beats/min vs. 70 percent for those with ≥70 beats/min. A heart rate below 70 beats/min was also associated with a lower risk for the combined endpoint of HF readmission or all-cause mortality. Subgroup analyses demonstrated that the beneﬁcial association between heart rate <70 beats/min and all-cause mortality was similar across various clinically relevant subgroups of patients, including those by baseline atrial ﬁbrillation and beta-blocker use. “These ﬁndings suggest that the beneﬁcial association of a lower heart rate and improved survival observed in patients with HFrEF [HF with reduced ejection fraction] might extend to those with HFpEF,” the study authors write. “Future studies are needed to develop and test interventions that might improve outcomes in patients with HFpEF and elevated heart rate.” Read details from the American College of Cardiology.

Center researchers have published a landmark article demonstrating that neighborhood disadvantage is a powerful predictor of cardiovascular outcomes. Cleveland Clinic Statistician Dr. Jarrod Dalton, a Senior Scholar in the Center, was joined by Center Faculty including Dr. Perzynski, Dr. Einstadter and Dr. Dawson in authoring this important work in Annals of Internal Medicine. The study uses electronic health record (EHR) data and is a clear example of how interdisciplinary researchers can come together and examine how social and clinical factors combine to shape population health.

“Comparative efficacy and discontinuation of dimethyl fumarate and fingolimod in clinical practice at 12-month follow-up,” co-authored by Thomas E. Love, Ph.D., the Center’s Director of Biostatistics and Evaluation, was named an Editor’s Choice by the journal Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders…

Hypertension is already nicknamed “the silent killer”, and for children and adolescents ages 3 -18, it could easily be called the under-diagnosed disease based on the results of a study published today in Pediatrics. The report’s lead author, Dr. David Kaelber, Chief Medical Informatics Officer at MetroHealth and Director of Health Care Informatics at the Center for Health Care Research and Policy explains the results here. Even though children’s blood pressure is routinely checked during office visits, physicians aren’t interpreting the results and following the appropriate guidelines for treatment…